Something Old, Something New
by Emerald Embers
Summary: Being a hero is tough work sometimes. Cloud/Zack


It had been a strange night.

Cloud was used to the fact hanging out with Zack usually meant strange nights, but even by those standards it was pretty impressive.

He kept forgetting Zack was a hero. It wasn't that he couldn't believe it, or that he was used to having a First Class as a friend, just... you would look at Zack and think "Isn't he fun?" "Isn't he great?", not "He looks like the only survivor of a suicide mission that he and his friends somehow made into a success". Zack had never really talked about it, which was fine by Cloud because he wasn't all that good at offering a shoulder to cry on, and he wouldn't have known about it at all if he hadn't been helping his dark-haired friend undress. Zack had been very, very drunk and needed not quite help, but certainly guidance, otherwise Cloud wouldn't have been allowed near the First Class quarters and that in itself had been seriously weird, leading his best friend through scores of _heroes_ and remembering Zack was one of them.

Even knowing Zack was wasted he shouldn't really have stayed, but Zack had been warm and sweaty, smelt sickly-sweet from the alcohol, and Cloud couldn't resist taking advantage. Just a little bit. It all went pretty well at first, taking off boots and socks while Zack attempted to shrug off his jacket and failed miserably, then helping with the jacket and shirt, and he should have just left after that but Cloud's mother had always warned him not to sleep wearing something around his throat so he undid the chain at the back of Zack's neck and pulled it free, blinked at the dogtags.

Three sets. He knew Zack's immediately - Z names weren't popular anywhere, really, so the initial stood out - but the other two were unfamiliar. Zack grabbed his hand and looked panicky when Cloud put them down on the bedside table. "Did you read 'em?"

"Yeah."

Zack's grip tightened. "You've gotta promise me, don't tell no one about this, don't ask, okay?"

"I, uh - I promise?" Cloud replied, not entirely sure what he was promising due to the onslaught of drunk grammar but figuring a vow of silence was in there somewhere.

Zack had nodded and breathed out shakily at that, picking the tags up and running his fingers over them. "Far as Shinra knows, these guys don't exist. Get it?" Cloud nodded, figuring it was best to humour Zack for now and get answers off him later. "Press got told I did the mission on my own. Forget the people I did it with, they were never there." Zack frowned, let Cloud take the tags back off him. "They were good guys, Cloud. Doesn't matter if we were all meant to be orphans, they deserve to have someone remember them. Shinra doesn't know I have these." He took another deep, shaky breath at that and Cloud panicked slightly on realising Zack was about half an inch away from a sob. Clueless as to how to deal with anything close to a crying fit, Cloud decided on throwing his arms around Zack's waist to try and comfort him as the best course of action. "Cloud?"

"Mm?"

"Don't worry about it, I'm just... I'm just a little bit pissed, you know how I get."

_No_, thought Cloud, _No, I really don't_, and he kept hold, trying to ignore the wetness dripping from Zack's cheeks onto his arm.

"Cloud, I'll be alright. Swear it." Cloud waited a bit longer until he felt Zack's breathing settle, then leant back, moved the tags from one hand to the other to stop the metal digging in too painfully. "Guess I look a mess, huh?"

"Yeah." Cloud wiped the heel of his empty hand across Zack's eyes to clear away the tears, only realised afterwards that it probably wasn't the most sensible thing to have done, and then Zack's hand was on his chin and those big violet eyes really were pretty, bloodshot or not, and, oh, this was his first kiss. And... and it was nice, somehow, even if Zack tasted a bit weird from tears and alcohol, and his mother had always said kissing with tongues was gross but it really wasn't when you actually tried it, or maybe Zack was just a really good kisser.

Cloud realised he was actually flailing for lack of something to do with his arms so he put them back around Zack's waist, realised he was being pulled backwards to sit on top of his friend, and despite being blessedly slack his grunt-issue trousers were doing nothing to help him ignore the fact that being pressed so close against such a good kisser was making the blood in his body find a centre of operations away from his heart.

The kiss stopped and Zack's hands slipped to Cloud's waist, rubbing circles into the muscles of his abdomen that felt really good, really damn good considering the strain they'd taken after a day's training. "I should let you go back before your pals start wondering where you are."

"I don't -" Cloud swallowed the truth even if Zack's eyes flared in sympathy before he got the whole of it out. "No one will miss me."

Zack was making a pig's ear of pretending he wasn't interested in keeping Cloud handy. "You wanna stay over? If your superiors say anything I can give them some bull about you helping me with something."

It wasn't as if they weren't already calling him variations on 'queer'. "Wouldn't mind," Cloud replied, impressively understating the situation at hand, and now Zack's hands slipped down the back of his slacks and that felt really scary and weirdly good. "I've never -"

"Oh _shit_," Zack stammered out, pulling his hands back and looking over Cloud for a second before repeating, "Oh _shit_. I forgot, you're like, fourteen."

"Fifteen," Cloud countered, feeling a little insulted.

"Fifteen. Fuck. I'm going the special hell. You done this before?"

Cloud shrugged by way of 'not really', shifted a little in discomfort and realised Zack was erect despite the sudden crisis of conscience. "Could just... just help each other out," Cloud offered, unable to find the proper descriptive words and pretty certain he couldn't have said them even if he did know them, taking Zack's hands in his own so his friend would stop clenching them.

Zack glanced at the hand holding the dogtags, taking them back and setting them down on the bedside table. Something flashed in his eyes for a second before he returned both hands to Cloud's belt, sliding it free and pulling down on the loosened slacks. "Kid," Zack began, fighting back a laugh that made Cloud really sickly nervous for a moment, "You have _got_ to start wearing boxers or you'll have a nasty accident someday."

Cloud grumbled vaguely about overdue laundry before unbuckling his friend's trousers, pulling them down and flicking open the buttons on his boxers, blinking when he realised the reason there seemed to be so many buttons to deal with was on account of Zack wearing two pairs one on top of the other. "What -"

"Safety first," Zack replied, leaning up slightly on his elbows until Cloud was done with the unbuttoning, lying back down to free up his hands afterwards so he could get to work.

Cloud didn't mean to squawk. Hell, it was the most embarrassing sound he could have made short of farting in surprise, but he just - how was he meant to guess it'd feel that good to have someone else's hands on you? Especially when that someone knew what they were doing. Zack kept his face straight for all of half a second before snorting in laughter, saying nothing about the fact Cloud's grip might have tightened a little in frustration. It actually seemed he was all the more enthusiastic on account of the tightening, which made sense really, and Cloud couldn't stop his toes curling a little when Zack reciprocated the squeeze.

.

Cloud went more than a little weak afterwards, legs buckling slightly so that Zack had to take charge of rolling him onto his side despite a) being the drunk one, and b) trying to keep the come on his chest and stomach from smearing on Cloud's uniform. Somehow - Shiva only knew how - he succeeded, adding another entry to Zack's already impressive list of abilities, and Cloud wasn't really sure what he was wittering on about to Zack but it seemed to make him smile. Truth be told he did feel a little confused and uncertain, not really knowing what he was meant to do now, but it seemed to involve taking the rest of his clothes off and finding a place on the carpet to put them that wasn't half curry or half beer, and once that was done, it seemed to involve curling up naked against Zack, which wasn't something to complain about.

"Just so you know," Zack mumbled against Cloud's hair, voice lively regardless of fatigue and afterglow, "If I look confused tomorrow, it's 'cause I hate mornings, not 'cause I'm having a "What did I do last night?" moment. Right?"

"Right," Cloud replied, not caring as much as he probably should have done, but afterglow was an odd thing.

.

At fifteen years of age Cloud had a fair amount of experience in waking up under odd circumstances, but a chocobo warking loudly after sticking its head through an open window into his best friend's room where he was tangled up naked in said friend's arms was a pretty unique wake-up call. More so given he was still a mountain boy at heart, more familiar with dragons than he would ever be with chocobos, and certainly not used to the idea of waking up naked with other boys.

Still, it had been a strange night. Seemed only fitting it should end with a strange morning.

.

The End


End file.
